Claim. Marxist reflection theory cannot account for cognition because mere mechanical reflection of the external world on consciousness is insufficient — the subject must additionally possess (a) interest in the object to form a common base for give-and-take and (b) a prototype to serve as the standard for judgment, both of which are active mental processes alien to passive material reflection.
Elaboration. Lee’s critique targets the structural inadequacy of copy/reflection theory: ‘if there is no prototype within the subject of cognition that corresponds to the things in the external world as criteria for judgment, cognition can not be made, even if the external world is reflected on the consciousness. Moreover, since cognition is carried out through give and receive action between subject and object, it is necessary for the subject to have interest in the object’ (Critique of the Theory of Reflection).
Lee illustrates the interest requirement with two examples elsewhere in the chapter: the lighthouse attendant’s wife who sleeps through wave-noise but wakes at her child’s cry (the louder stimulus is not perceived because no interest attaches; the softer is perceived because deep interest attaches); and the friend who passes unnoticed when one is absorbed in thought. Reflection alone, no matter how passive-mechanical, cannot select for what consciousness actually registers.
The prototype requirement points to a different gap. Reflection produces an image but cannot evaluate it. Without a pre-existing standard against which to collate the incoming sense image, no judgment of ‘this is X’ can occur. Hearing an unknown foreign language for the first time produces auditory reflection but no cognition of meaning; seeing a stranger produces visual reflection but only the cognition ‘stranger.’ Reflection without prototype is sub-cognitive — it produces sensation but not knowledge.
The deeper objection — pursued in Lee’s critique of sensory/rational cognition and practice in Marxism — is that reflection theory cannot bridge the gap between passive copy and active rational cognition or revolutionary practice. If consciousness is merely a product/function of the brain that passively mirrors reality, how does it suddenly become an active agent of abstraction, judgment, inference, and political action? ‘No reasonable explanation is given. This means that here there is a logical gap in the Marxist view.’ For Lee, only mind-brain give-and-take — with mind possessing genuine causal powers of understanding and reason — can supply the active component reflection theory presupposes but cannot account for.
The critique parallels (and Lee may be drawing on) similar critiques made by phenomenology against naive empiricism. The Marxist response would typically be that ‘interest’ and ‘prototype’ can themselves be analyzed as products of social/material conditions — Lee’s reply is implicitly that this regress never reaches an active subject capable of revolutionary practice without smuggling in mental causation. Worth threading once an explicit Marxist counter-atomic exists.
See also. ut-cognition-as-collation-not-reflection-or-synthesis, ut-critique-of-kantian-agnosticism-via-sungsang-hyungsang, prototype-as-standard-of-cognition